Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

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Two monsters

On November 28, 1994, notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison by a fellow inmate. Unspeakably heinous though Dahmer’s crimes were, his murder can only be condemned. To be sure, by committing his crimes, Dahmer had forfeited his right to life. By no means can it be said that the injustice he suffered was as grave as what he inflicted upon his victims. But the state alone had the moral authority to execute him, and no private individual can usurp that authority. Vigilantism is itself a grave offense against the moral and social order, and Dahmer’s murderer merited severe punishment.

The recent murder of another notorious serial killer – the late-term abortionist George Tiller – is in most morally relevant respects parallel to the Dahmer case. It is true that Tiller, unlike Dahmer, was not punished by our legal system for his crimes; indeed, most of those crimes, though clearly against the natural moral law, are not against the positive law of either the state or the country in which Tiller resided. That is testimony only to the extreme depravity of contemporary American society, and does not excuse Tiller one iota. Still, as in the Dahmer case, no private citizen has the right to take justice into his own hands, and Tiller’s murderer ought to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

As in the Dahmer case, though, the victim of this crime was himself an evil man and does not deserve our tears.

Do I seriously mean to suggest that Tiller was as bad as Dahmer? No, because Tiller was almost certainly a more evil man than Dahmer was. There are at least five considerations that favor this judgment.

First, Tiller’s victims were more numerous than Dahmer’s.

Second, Dahmer expressed remorse for his crimes. Tiller never did.

Third, and relatedly, Dahmer was apparently fully aware that what he did was evil, while Tiller pretended, to himself and others, that what he did was not evil. Some might think that such self-deception lessens Tiller's moral corruption, but in fact it exacerbates it. A man who knows that what he does is evil but does it anyway is corrupt; a man who has become so desensitized to the evil he does that he can no longer even perceive it as evil is even more corrupt. The sins of the former are likely to be sins of weakness; the sins of the latter, to be willful sins of malice. (Older moralists understood this. The modern cult of “authenticity” and “sincerity” has blinded us to it – and is itself a mark of our own grave moral corruption.)

Fourth, and again relatedly, Dahmer was evidently to some extent acting out of compulsion. This does not exculpate him, and the compulsion was a consequence of his freely indulging his evil for years. Still, his will evidently had become so corrupted that he eventually reached the point where he could barely control himself. The problem was only exacerbated by the fact that his murderous impulses were associated with various sexual perversions – always unruly under even the best circumstances – and that he had learned to indulge his dark desires in secret, free from the fear of exposure and shame that would deter most others afflicted by the same bizarre temptations. Tiller’s murders, by contrast, were committed openly, and resulted from no compulsion at all. It was neither bloodlust, nor sexual perversion, nor any other ungovernable passion that drove him to baby-killing, but the cold and cruel willfulness of the ideologue. If Dahmer was a miniature Caligula, Tiller was a poor man’s Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot.

Finally, Tiller added to his already unspeakable crimes the grave sin of blasphemy, insofar as he was (we now know) a churchgoer who evidently regarded his obeisance to Moloch as fully compatible with the religion of Jesus Christ. To my knowledge Dahmer never had the temerity to claim that a good Christian could be a cannibal.

This side of the grave, we are, mercifully, spared the knowledge of who is in Hell. As a Catholic, I pray for Tiller’s soul, as I pray for Dahmer’s. But it would be foolish to think it at all likely that either man died in a state of grace. Still, I’d give Dahmer better odds than the other, greater monster.

Comments (126)

Woe to the so-called "Catholic" if they should happen to think that the way of the mob and, more significantly, the way to exemplify "RESPECT FOR LIFE" is by taking it!

Shame on You! Shame on You All!

Thankfully, there are those like Rigali who subscribe to a more genuine Christianity:

"Our bishops' conference and all its members have repeatedly and publicly denounced all forms of violence in our society, including abortion as well as the misguided resort to violence by anyone opposed to abortion," Cardinal Rigali said. "Such killing is the opposite of everything we stand for, and everything we want our culture to stand for: respect for the life of each and every human being from its beginning to its natural end. We pray for Dr. Tiller and his family."

Thanks for this great post, Ed. It gets the balance right: Not pretending that things are equivalent that are not equivalent (abortion on the one hand and vigilante murder of a murderer on the other), explaining who Tiller really was in unvarnished terms rather than allowing him to be turned into a mere victim or (heaven help us) a martyr, but at the same time unequivocally condemning vigilante murder. I appreciate your leading out here.

...explaining who Tiller really was in unvarnished terms rather than allowing him to be turned into a mere victim or (heaven help us) a martyr...

More reason as to why all Pro-Lifers should engage in a strategic alliance with the NRA and start arming themselves to the hilt, hunting down abortion clinic doctors as well as its workers responsible for perpetrating such evil.

Incredible.

As if the way to get out the "Pro-Life" message is to adopt the Dirty Harry Creed.

Aristocles, I don't see anywhere that either Ed or Lydia are advocating vigilantism - in fact, expressly the opposite. All that's happening is that they refuse to pretend Tiller's murder was anything but a murder, and also refusing to pretend that Tiller was a really moral figure who was a model citizen and didn't have blood on his hands. I'm glad the response I've seen so far to this murder is to condemn this act of vigilantism expressly, such vile acts generally, but not to engage in a game of make-believe about who Tiller was and what he did.

I can entirely endorse what Cardinal Rigali said, by the way. But what should we say about Tiller? How should we view his acts and the man himself, then and now?

I'm afraid Aristocles is not amenable to reason. In this case, for example, explicit condemnations of vigilante murder simply pass him by. I have tried reasoning with him on numerous occasions, on numerous subjects, and he just gets himself more hysterical, irrational, and worked-up and attributes more and more things to me and others that we never said. I've honestly sometimes wondered if English is not his first language or if there's some other explanation for his seeming inability to understand things that are explained to him again and again. I have no really good explanation, and meanwhile I've given up trying to get him to be reasonable when he's like this. It's hopeless. Ed's and my remarks here speak for themselves to everyone who has read them--all the way through.

W.r.t. point 3, I would suggest Tiller's position is even worse than stated. Some people try to tell us that their sin is not evil. But a worse class of people try to tell us that their sin is a virtue, and that those who are defending the right to life are the ones who are evil.

In the long run, the most unfortunate consequence that may come out of this entire unfortunate mess is that abortion advocates can tout themselves as oppressed victims, "speaking truth to power even in the face of violent repression" or some such nonsense.

I stand with the Pro-Life groups who have condemned Tiller's murder as fundamentally opposed to the message of the dignity of the human person, but I'm not sure the following point is defensible:

"No private citizen has the right to take justice into his own hands"

There is one instance where a private citizen is morally permitted to use deadly force: defense of oneself or others. Consider that Tiller had murdered over 60,000 children, and his death surely prevented the deaths of many more (remember Tiller was at the end of the line for most abortions. There are few who would take his place). I don't believe you can make a moral argument against "disruption of the social order" without claiming that it would apply to all uses of deadly force as a means of defense.

Tiller’s murders, by contrast, were committed openly, and resulted from no compulsion at all. It was neither bloodlust, nor sexual perversion, nor any other ungovernable passion that drove him to baby-killing, but the cold and cruel willfulness of the ideologue.

Do we really know what motivated Tiller? What allows a man to rationalize the taking of innocent human life? Do we truly know the emotional, psychological and spiritual underpinnings of a man like Tiller? How did he hold his kids at night, confident his hands weren't blood-stained?

Tiller did not treacherously lure his victims to their deaths. They were willingly brought to him by their own parents and that adds another layer of incomprehensible horror to an already impossibly dark aspect of modern life.

I'm afraid your narrative, packed as it is with neat categories and glib comparisons is a failed attempt to solve an unfathomable mystery. Still, it was good to read 48 hours after the fact, a condemnation of his unnamed killer (Scott Roeder) who will soon become, thanks to our warped media and the schadenfreude of some purported allies, the face of the pro-life movement.

How odd. The last time you used this trope was when you were spinning your funny little web of emotive nonsense about how it's fine to torture "vile Mohammedans." It wasn't especially convincing then, what with all the broad appeals to your own anecdotal passion and woe (just though they may be), and it's not very convincing now given how completely and apparently willfully you're misreading what has actually been said by the subjects of your outrage. Why do you bother? Who do you imagine will care?

I realize I've got some nerve even saying this, given that I've never posted here before (though I read the blog all the time), but your commentary is and has been some of the most trivial and wankerous nonsense going and I'm damned if I'll let it pass another moment without it being called out.

Still, it was good to read 48 hours after the fact, a condemnation of his unnamed killer (Scott Roeder) who will soon become, thanks to our warped media and the schadenfreude of some purported allies, the face of the pro-life movement.

I think it's curious to see so many members of the pro-life movement going to such great lengths to condemn Tiller's murder. I am not speaking of Dr. Feser's post, but of Fr. Frank Pavone, for instance. They doth protest too much, methinks. It's almost as if they expect the political ramifications to backfire on them.

The fact of the matter is that Tiller's murder will have almost zero political consequences, one way or the other. It will not change anybody's opinion about abortion, or the pro-life movement, or the laws of the land. It will not be brought up in political ads or debates. It will be completely forgotten within a week.

This suggests to me that there is a meta-narrative going on above and beyond the talking points on both sides of the abortion debate. Most people do not seem particularly eager to see the issue resolved, nor have they given serious strategic consideration to the measures necessary to resolve it. Both camps focus on converting individual hearts and minds within the context of the current legislative regime. But this is no real answer; it is only a prolongation of the debate, and this dilatory tactic is deliberate.

I think there are great uncertainties at work deep in the bosom of our collective psyche. The pro-lifers aren't quite sure they want to live with the strictures of their own moral code, and the pro-choicers aren't quite sure that abortion isn't a grave evil. This uncertainty will ensure that the Tiller matter gets promptly burried. It's too real, too plain, and too sober a fact to confront, just like the facts of abortion itself.

When being confronted with these facts, the great majority of people have no idea what to do. They will simply turn away and distract themselves with something else, like a child who hears that his father just lost his job. He knows there is something dreadfully wrong, but there is nothing he can do but "act childish," revert to helplessness, sink into the dark currents of unconscious being. Abortion itself is a symptom of this sinking, but most of the debate surrounding it is not much of an improvement. The catchwords are verbal palliatives designed to obscure and soften reality. Roeder lept up like a flame in this darkness, expended himself in one devastating burst, and flickered out again, of no more consequence than a firefly in the woods; and the earth turns still, untroubled.

This is the wretchedness of mankind, the slow and pointless burn, the bitter necessities that cause him to forget and accept all manner of heinous abuses. The only cure is the breaking in of the transcendent God which elevates man to the heights of creation. This alone makes him capable of self-sacrifice and noble purpose. Blessed are those who have ears to hear Him. Pray, O pray ye all, that it may be you.

Vigilantism is itself a grave offense against the moral and social order...

I'll grant the latter readily. I think it is at least debatable if the moral order of Kansas is worst today than it was a week ago. As I noted in another place, there is a tendency in discussing the Tiller case to assert the only licit user of violence is the State. It's a totalitarian's pacifism so to speak.

Tiller, but this has nothing to do with how evil he is, and everything to do with who his intended victims are. I'd rather have Hitler as a neighbor than Stalin, because Hitler would be no threat to me. This doesn't mean that Hitler is somehow a better person.

Consider that Tiller had murdered over 60,000 children, and his death surely prevented the deaths of many more (remember Tiller was at the end of the line for most abortions. There are few who would take his place).

In order for self defense to be licit, the threat must be imminent. Tiller wasn't about to kill anyone. He was serving as an usher at his church. For all that you, I, or the killer knows, he was going to fall down at the altar, repent of his sins and dedicate himself to a life of prayer and penance.

Is is likely? Heck no. But that's why "needs killin'" is not a legitimate use of force. There are too many variables when dealing with a remote threat, (rather than an imminent one) to justify taking a human life.

CJ is right about the imminence of threat and self-defense/defense of the innocent. If we think of all the paradigm cases of such defense we know of, we realize that there was a true emergency situation on the ground--someone breaking and entering a house, thugs threatening a life at that very moment, a suicide bomber about to push the button on his vest, etc. If the other definition of "defense" were allowed to pass muster, we would have no distinction even in analysis between "defense" and vigilantism. This was clearly the latter.

The recent murder of another notorious serial killer – the late-term abortionist George Tiller – is in most morally relevant respects parallel to the Dahmer case.

I would compare it to someone murdering Dr. Kevorkian before he was convicted, at least in terms of the utilitarian motivations involved in the procedure as well as the political aspect. I won't cry any tears over Tiller's murder, but I will note how odd it is to read from Dr. Feser that someone like Bill Ayers was mainly guilty of vigilantism because innocent lives were at stake and he was trying to stop their unjust killing.

Step2, since you are a lawyer, it is at least somewhat understandable that you don't believe you can take into account the objective situation vis a vis guilt and innocence in categorizing a sin and/or a crime. From your perspective, Ayers's victims must be categorized like Tiller on the grounds that neither had been _convicted_ of any crime. Ed, however, is right morally to regard Tiller as a murderer despite his being unconvicted and therefore to regard Tiller's murder, in turn, as vigilantism rather than as a terrorist act against innocent victims. He is also, of course, right to condemn vigilantism.

"I think it's curious to see so many members of the pro-life movement going to such great lengths to condemn Tiller's murder. I am not speaking of Dr. Feser's post, but of Fr. Frank Pavone, for instance. They doth protest too much, methinks. It's almost as if they expect the political ramifications to backfire on them."

Here's why. I suspect that if the characters had been different, this is how MSNBC would communicate the story:

If Dr. Tiller had been murdered by a Muslim:: "The shooter, apparently an immigrant to the United States, seemed to be influenced by his anti-abortion neighbors, virtually all of whom are Christian Fundamentalists. Islam, in contrast, is a religion of peace, as both former President Bush and his successor, President Obama, have pointed out. "

If Dr. Tiller had been a Christian Fundamentalist murdered by a bomb planted by Bill Ayers: "The bomber, a misguided anti-war activist attracted to an otherwise good cause, grew up in a strict fundamentalist household, and apparently could not completely distance himself from that religious militancy. Dr. Tiller, a strong proponent of the Iraq war, had been vocal and belligerent about his beliefs, seeming to want to provoke his anti-war neighbors. This is why sensitivity training is essential so that we can learn how to understand the other."

If Dr. Tiller had been a Catholic Bishop murdered by a gay AIDS activist, "The shooter, rightly troubled by the Vatican's anti-condom policy and condemnation of homosexual conduct, could not take it anymore, and crossed a line that few if any activists are willing to cross. A bishop, sadly, is dead. But one has to ask to oneself whether this tragedy could have been avoided if the Vatican had been more understanding of the plight of gay citizens. Sometimes religion kills."

I do not understand all of this nonsense about praying for this man. I did not know him and I never will, thus I will never be able to pray for him in a sincere way. I do not kneel and pray for all of the murderers and rapists out in the world, and if I do it is not with the same dedication that I use to pray for those attached to me somehow (family, friends, community, etc.).

I also would never have murdered him because he never did anything to me or my family and friends. Vigilantism aside, no one would be obligated to murder this man because not everyone is equally obligated to stop all abortions everywhere and always. Perhaps if he wanted to murder my child or the child of someone in my family I would want him brought to justice, but none of this is the case. This does not mean that I feel bad that he is dead. Rather, the world has one less murderer in it.

Do we know whether Tiller murdered a child that was close to the killer in some way?

The recent murder of another notorious serial killer – the late-term abortionist George Tiller – is in most morally relevant respects parallel to the Dahmer case. It is true that Tiller, unlike Dahmer, was not punished by our legal system for his crimes; indeed, most of those crimes, though clearly against the natural moral law, are not against the positive law of either the state or the country in which Tiller resided. That is testimony only to the extreme depravity of contemporary American society, and does not excuse Tiller one iota. Still, as in the Dahmer case, no private citizen has the right to take justice into his own hands, and Tiller’s murderer ought to be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

I am not necessarily excusing the killing of Tiller, as I agree with you that it was still a capital murder due to God's divine will regarding sin and murder. That said, I think you miss an important difference here with respect to the rule of law and morality: Tiller had the full blessing of the state to murder, Dahmer did not.

As a commenter on my blog brought up, how would you react if the courts ruled that Dahmer was not only free to go, but to carry out his perversions without the government's interference? Not only that, but ruled that the police could not, in any way, interfere with men like Dahmer as they go about murdering people?

Abortion is dangerously close to that situation. In any form, abortion on demand is perilously close to that, and partial birth abortion is, in no respect, distinct from hiring a hitman to murder a newborn.

The vigilantism may not have been morally justified, but let's not pretend that it was the real threat to civil order. All that does is add a layer of outrage which isn't justified by reality.

CJ is right about the imminence of threat and self-defense/defense of the innocent. If we think of all the paradigm cases of such defense we know of, we realize that there was a true emergency situation on the ground--someone breaking and entering a house, thugs threatening a life at that very moment, a suicide bomber about to push the button on his vest, etc. If the other definition of "defense" were allowed to pass muster, we would have no distinction even in analysis between "defense" and vigilantism. This was clearly the latter.

If you see a suicide bomber walking, unopposed near a school, and he doesn't have his finger on the trigger yet, and you are too far away to do more than shoot him dead with a rifle, is that vigilantism or defense of the innocent?

Let's make that more interesting. Suppose you work for an agency that got signals intelligence concerning his group. You know that that school is his target. Is that vigilantism or defense of the innocent?

And lest anyone weasel out of that, the government too is guilty of vigilantism when it breaks its own laws.

"the victim of this crime was himself an evil man and does not deserve our tears"

On the contrary; he deserves our tears even MORE because he was an evil man, and died before he could see the error of his ways, repent, and convert. No death is so tragic as the untimely death of a sinner.

Let us pray that the Lord treats him (and us) with mercy rather than giving us what we deserve; for we, none of us, are able to merit heaven through our own deeds, but only by the grace of God.

At least, your contrived scenarios must be causing some embarrassment to those who have winked at your Holy Avenger - The Christian Action-figure schtick.

Lay with a dog, and you get its fleas. You need to distance yourself from aristocles because you're starting to behave like him. I have not even attempted to justify his murder on any grounds. You are confusing my apathy and general disgust with your handwringing with support for his murder.

On the contrary; he deserves our tears even MORE because he was an evil man, and died before he could see the error of his ways, repent, and convert. No death is so tragic as the untimely death of a sinner.

Let us pray that the Lord treats him (and us) with mercy rather than giving us what we deserve; for we, none of us, are able to merit heaven through our own deeds, but only by the grace of God.

It's unfortunate that we seem to be divided into two camps on this subject: those who regard his death as an unqualified tragedy and moral crime, and those who are, to put it nicely, singing "ding dong the witch-doctor's dead!" I think it's only natural to at once be quite happy to see him no longer capable of murdering kids, and yet deeply lament that it had to come to this. That's where I fall on this, anyway.

Mike T, I'd say the analogy (if we are to talk about suicide bombers) is to someone who is intending to engage in a suicide bombing tomorrow, is not wearing a vest now, and is attending his mosque at the moment. And in that case, shooting him dead is unequivocally and beyond all question vigilantism, taking the law into your own hands, and not justified on "defense" grounds.

How odd. The last time you used this trope was when you were spinning your funny little web of emotive nonsense about how it's fine to torture "vile Mohammedans." It wasn't especially convincing then, what with all the broad appeals to your own anecdotal passion and woe (just though they may be), and it's not very convincing now given how completely and apparently willfully you're misreading what has actually been said by the subjects of your outrage. Why do you bother? Who do you imagine will care?

How it's fine to torture "vile Mohammedans"?

Speaking of completely and apparently willfully some folks are misreading others, you seem to exemplify the very breed yourself.

At any rate, I'll be damned should "Christians" (and, by the way, I wasn't even necessarily referring specifically to either Lydia or Ed in this case) attempt to salve their own pathetic excuse for a conscience by dignifying their murderous bent through some petty rationalization that would excuse a deed almost as equally vile as those of the criminals discussed for they eminate from the very same atrocious dis-"respect for life" that the Culture of Death itself is based.

Feser's poor argumentation is a paradigm case of intellectually dishonesty.

IF abortion is murder, and IF Tiller was at least as evil as Dahmer, and given that the state doesn't persecute abortion since decades and will very probably not punish abortionists for many years to come, it IS everyone's right to "take justice into one's own hands"; it might even be obligatory to do so.
If Feser were right, the (illegal) German resistance against the Nazi regime, would have been morally wrong. Men like Bonhoeffer and Stauffenberg would have been executed deservedly - which strikes me as an absurd conclusion.
Then, why is Feser so eager to condemn "vigilantism", thereby tolerating what he (allegedly) thinks is an obvious violation of natural law and millionfold mass murder? There are two possible reasons for his behavior:

a) Feser is simply a self-deceptive coward, just loving his comfortable life as a well-paid professor, author and speaker too much; deliberately enjoying the protection of just the government and society he pretendedly abhors so much;
or even more plausible
b) he knows deep in his heart that, first, killing embryos, though perhaps morally wrong, is not morally equivalent with murdering full-fledged persons, and secondly, that it is not obvious that the killing of human beings, who are without a memory, self-consciousness or a complex emotional life is a grave moral evil at all.

Either way, the cynism, hypocrisy and self-righteousness of his post is just breath-taking.

Grobi, you're argument doesn't follow. In order for it to work, you need this premise:

1. Whenever the law fails to accomplish a good, a citizen has an absolute right to bring about that good.

But Feser doesn't believe that, and it is inconsistent with the natural law tradition he embraces.

You write:
" secondly, that it is not obvious that the killing of human beings, who are without a memory, self-consciousness or a complex emotional life is a grave moral evil at all."

Actually, it's not obvious at all. What you need is this premise:

2. Beings who are without memory, self-consciousness or a complex emotional life are not moral persons.

But why should we believe that? After all, I am identical to the fetus that my mother carried in her womb in 1960. I have a first-person awareness that I am an intrinsically valuable person. There is nothing that I acquired after coming into being that turned me into something I wasn't before. So, therefore, memory, self-consciousness are not necessary conditions for me to be a moral person.

Moreover, suppose I lost all my memories and self-consciousness as a consequence of going into a deep coma. Suppose I come out of the coma in precisely the same position I was when I was a fetus: I have to learn everything over again. Imagine that I had a will prior to going into the coma that stated, "If I go into a coma and lose all my memory, abilities, and talents, and later come out of it and have to start over, make sure that no one kills me, for I have a right to life." Should that request have been honored while I was in the coma even though everyone knows that I am precisely the same position as the standard fetus?

What was that line from the Bible: "Work out thy salvation in fear and trembling...."

There's a Catholic tension, on the one hand we are to with great trust throw ourselves and our sins into that vast well of suffering of Christ's passion, but on the other, we are to live without presumption, and "from now on, avoid[ing] this sin" or any other.

I'd hesitate to face judgement, but I don't know how one with Tiller's deeds faces the Almighty.

Francis, I very much appreciate your response.
According to you I need the following premise:

1. Whenever the law fails to accomplish a good, a citizen has an absolute right to bring about that good.

I fully agree, of course, that this premise is very implausible. Noone who thinks that a constitutional state with binding laws has any value at all, can adhere to it.
But I don't think that I need a priniple so odd to defend my argument. What about the following alternative premise.

1* When the laws fails to accomplish a very important good, a citizen has in rare cases a right to bring about that good. The hindrance of millionfold mass murder is such a case.

Unlike yours, this premise strikes me as very plausible.

With respect to your second (valuable) point: I did't want to argue whether abortion is morally right or wrong. My argument was twofold, first, that abortion should not be considered as morally equivalent with murder of full-fledged persons, secondly, that whatever the truth might be concerning abortion, it is not an obvious one. That Dahmer did something morally abominable, however, is obvious.
I am sympathetic with your argument for the moral wrongness of abortion; however, it is besides my central point against Feser's obscene analogy.

Oh, well, all hail infanticide, then. Grobi apparently thinks even late-term abortion is just ducky, and considering that those little victims of Tiller's could just as easily be found in the preemie unit of any hospital you know, complete with their absence of a "complex emotional life," the ability to understand the Pythagorean Theorem, or whatever else Grobi wants to make requisite for "full-fledged personhood," I guess if Mommy and Daddy decided to "send them back" by having their brains sucked out, that would be just fine, too.

Some people would call this a reductio. Others would bite the bullet. I know which ones I want to have anything to do with.

Nowhere in my comments I was even close to "hail infanticide", nor to suggest that late-term abortion is "just ducky".

That all these difficult moral issues and distinctions are so obvious to you, doesn't mean, that they are obvious to everyone.
Even you should concede that it is not as clear that abortion of three month embryos is murder (i.e. intentional and malicious), as it is clear that Dahmer's crimes were.

I have a first-person awareness that I am an intrinsically valuable person. There is nothing that I acquired after coming into being that turned me into something I wasn't before.

The something you acquired after coming into being is the development of organized, complex neural pathways in order to have a first-person awareness. BTW, this is why I agree with pro-lifers on post-viability abortions, despite the high emotional costs. We should be clear about why a woman seeks an abortion that late, which is often because of major deformation and genetic abnormalities. In the worst cases, those children can look forward to multiple risky surgeries and a life expectancy measured in weeks or months. The prospect of that choice is why Tiller, being comparable to Stalin, also provided funeral services and grief counseling.

Ed, however, is right morally to regard Tiller as a murderer despite his being unconvicted...

If Dr. Feser is making a stance on moral and not legal principle, which is what I presumed he was doing, the moral principle is that innocent lives are deserving of protection, especially when they are being unjustly destroyed in a legal manner. To conclude that this makes Ayers actions distinct from Tiller's murderer is absurd.

That all these difficult moral issues and distinctions are so obvious to you, doesn't mean, that they are obvious to everyone.

This gets to the heart of the issue -- at least, for me.

While I myself consider abortion of any kind just as hideously horrific & atrociously criminal as the holocaust itself; concerning those who desire simply to operate within the acceptable bounds & seemingly "just" parameters of the Law, innocently submitting themselves to the precepts of Man as their Rule for Justice (since they themselves might not know any better); regarding such folks, must we really consign even these to outright condemnation (drawing a parallel between folks -- who might more likely be naive individuals than the awful villains we believe them to be -- and the ever inimical Hitler/Dahmer, etc.) and, ultimately, crucify them for offenses they might not be immediately aware as genuinely being crimes themselves (more precisely, that abortion itself is actually murder -- and, indeed, of the worst kind -- contrary to the enlightened opinions of this world's cognoscente & Man's Law itself), that they may be, quite simply, oblivious to?

I'm the commenter that Mike T is talking about. And I do think that the state's unlawful blessing of Tiller's infanticide makes this case very close to borderline.

There is one situation in which it is *not* vigilantism to "take justice into your own hands": When you are in an anarchic no-man's land in which there is no system of justice in which to seek recompense and protection. In that case, you have no choice. In fact, that's how systems of justice are created in the first place. Somebody has to step up and lay down the law by putting down the bad guys.

That, of course, wasn't the situation with Dahmer. There was a system in place by which Dahmer could be punished for his crimes. In fact, he was being punished for his crimes. The system might not have been as fast, or as harsh, as some people would like, but it was there nonetheless, and people have no right to subvert an existing system of lawful justice to impose their own.

But consider the case that Mike T lays out above, where Dahmer is given free reign by the courts to go on his killing spree with no interference from the police. Would it then be vigilantism to kill him rather than to use the established justice system? Would everyone be obligated to just sit back and watch him kill people, on the grounds that they should let the (nonexistent) justice system work?

I say no, because in such a situation there is no justice system. It is precisely a lawless no-man's land situation as described above. Additionally, the "law" stating that Dahmer may not be punished is not a real law at all, but merely the will of tyrants imposed on others by illegitimate means.

And also, in such a situation, I don't think you'd be obligated to wait for Dahmer to actually be in the middle of murdering another person before you could justifiably kill him in defense of others. In fact, I think it would be irresponsible to do so. The fact that he is in the middle of a killing spree is sufficient. You know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he has killed many others and will almost surely kill again if not stopped. As I see it, he is perpetually in the process of murdering until his killing spree is ended.

The fact is, this bizarre nightmare scenario is extremely close to the situation we are actually in with partial birth abortion. Closer than anyone, even most pro-lifers, cares to think about. There is no established system of justice whereby men like Tiller may by tried. It is a lawless no-man's land. The "laws" preventing justice are not laws at all, but the illegitimate imposition of power by tyrants. Moreover, he was still in the middle of a daily killing spree at the time he was killed. Under our current system, there was no possible way to stop Dahmer's killing spree and bring him to justice than the way in which it was actually done.

There are a few things separating the fictitious state-sponsored-Dahmer scenario from the actual state-sponsored-Tiller reality, and which work in favor of Tiller. However, it's not a lot different. This is closer to the justified homicide borderline than most people think, imo.

Actually, it occurs to me that killing Tiller wasn't necessarily the *only* way to stop his murder spree. Another way would have been to knock him unconscious, and then cut off his hands and feet (and perhaps tongue, to prevent the inevitable speaking tour), thus rendering him incapable of plying his evil trade. Had Tiller's killer done that instead, I wouldn't even consider this case to be near-borderline. In that case, I'd offer to buy him a beer if I ever got the chance. Of course, that would also be harder to pull off.

Tiller's killer did no have the right to murder him. At the same time, in no real sense, did Tiller himself have a "right to life." He deserved to die and to be punished for his career of mass murder; but the only entity with authority to do that is the state and God Himself, of course. I can't kill ex-Nazis or ex-Communists either, nor many other peopel who are not only very evil but truly deserve to be punished with death for their acts. This passion for justice and hatred of evildoers is deeply embedded in our psyche; it's why the state exists at all. Otherwise, for folks like Tiller, "and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a wanderer and fugitive on the earth; and it will come to pass, that every one who finds me will slay me."

Our habitual American "rights talk" sometimes gets in the way of the important concept of authority. I have a right to life, for instance. It is a claim against the state and other people. Likewise, I have a right to the fruits of my labors, but I can also alienate that right--by fraud for instance--but even then, you do not necessarily have a corresponding right to self help. Self help remedies are highly limited in the law to exigent circumstances like self-defense, shop keeper's privilege, removing trespassers "molliter manus imposuit" and a few other categories. Most of these involve cases where extreme injustice would result without self help, or self help only until neutral authorities can take over.

It is an important principle that "no man should be a judge in his own cause." This is especially true in cases of revenge for wrongdoing and competing rights, as in the case of abortion. But recognizing these principles of neutrality and dispassion should not make us forget that the harm of murdring someone like Tiller is to us, the community and our laws, even if Tiller himself in no real sense deserved to live. He didn't, but we deserve to have our laws respected, so long as our regime in general deserves our obedience. I would only condemn his murder in this sense, not as a grave injustice to Tiller himself. He is like the criminal let go on the exclusionary rule; he did not really deserve to get away with it, but we all collectively desrve to have the police follow certain rules and we allow undeniable dirtbags to act as surrogates for the community's interest, even though the benefit goes seemingly to those least deserving to claim of any privilege of the law.

Forgive me if this has already been brought up in the comments: It seems that the main reason cited for considering the killing of Tiller to be an instance of vigilantism is that Tiller was not, at the time of his death, engaged in performing an abortion. Is that correct? Let's change the scenario then. What if Tiller had been performing an abortion at the time of his death? Would you still call his killer a vigilante? The above criterion for vigilantism certainly does not permit one to call the killer (in the revised scenario) a vigilante? What other conditions would you add that would warrant you to attribute vigilantism to the revised scenario? Thanks

Even you should concede that it is not as clear that abortion of three month embryos is murder (i.e. intentional and malicious), as it is clear that Dahmer's crimes were.

Grobi, even if I conceded that (which actually, I don't, and by the way, a three-month-old unborn child is technically referred to as a fetus, not an embryo--the term "embryo" is used only up to the 8th week), you are pretending that George Tiller was not a late-term abortionist if you wish to rest any case relevant to this case on that argument. That's what annoys me about people like you. If all you wanted to do was to point to some sort of alleged inconsistency in Ed's position (and that on the _presumption_ that he would approve of Bonhoeffer's actions, which is something he never said), you could simply have used some phrase like "or Feser doesn't really believe that *what Tiller did* is tantamount to murder and the equivalent of what Dahmer did." Something like that. But no. You couldn't just stick to an abstract logical point. You had to work in your little spiel about how sub-human unborn children are on the basis of their lack of some sort of complex consciousness you evidently are looking for, without any acknowledgment of the nature of Tiller's business and of the fact that, given your criteria of personhood and your evident defense of Tiller's actions, post-birth infanticide would also be something "less than murder."

Now, of course, you'd like to shift as quickly as possible to talking as early as possible in gestation. If it were left to pro-aborts, they'd rather carry out the entire conversation considering only one-day-old newly conceived zygotes (because they don't _look_ like babies or _act_ like babies, and because they can never be found post-birth in preemies units), hastily turn their eyes and the conversation away from anything from the time the child has a human form on, _especially_ not talk about late-term abortion, and then conclude that the whole thing is just so *unobvious* that, of course, no serious person could consider George Tiller to be a real murderer. Which is patently absurd, and is a rhetorical trick with which I, for one, have no patience.

David raises a good question, and I think others may have more things or better things to say about it than I do. My own response would be that there are a number of things that make killing an abortionist vigilantism as opposed to defense. The Tiller murder is a knock-down, because there he was doing something wholly different from his murderous work. It's not even close to any sort of line or a difficult question but rather a paradigm case of vigilantism. In the scenario you envisage, I think we're supposed to imagine the person deliberately hiding in the abortion room or something--in other words, putting himself into a situation where he is going to be witnessing and standing by doing nothing at an abortion _unless_ he takes violent action. Now, that violent action could take a lot of forms, including non-lethal ones. But leave that aside for the moment. The trouble is here, because we are dealing with a form of murder that is legal, the thing is set up and scheduled in advance, and under normal circumstances there is no one present who has any intention of trying to stop it. In this the situation differs from an attack on you or your wife in your home or in a public place. In those cases, you didn't deliberately go there because someone was going to be killed in the hopes of, instead, killing the would-be killer. The evil of our present abortion regime makes the whole situation artificial and difficult to analogize to the usual self-defense scenario, which arises unexpectedly. In other words, in the case you envisage, David, one would have to _court_ being in the situation of being present at the abortion, which places it pretty clearly in a different category from simply _seeing_ an attack and coming to someone's aid.

But there is another weird twist to the abortion scenario: You cannot even attempt to rescue the child and run off with it, because the child is literally not physically separate from a person--its mother--who presumably is seeking to have it killed and who, in our present regime of legal abortion, will almost certainly be able to have it killed. Thus the whole situation is very nearly sui generis. There is no way to rescue the child from its would-be killers, because the child is not separate from its mother, and because you are in a country where abortionists abound and operate legally. So _if_ someone were to hide in the abortion clinic and use some sort of force, perhaps up to lethal force, to stop the abortion at that particular time and on that particular day, it would almost certainly be futile as an attempt to save that particular child's life.

For these reasons (and there are probably others I haven't thought of), I regard the person in the situation you describe as also being a vigilante.

It's at least mildly interesting that both of these issues arise precisely because of the legality of abortion in our country, and that the fact of taking the law into one's own hands is usually considered to be of the essence of vigilantism.

Lydia, are you telling me that you concede they were acting on the same basic strategy, it is merely the targets that make one deserving of being called terrorism? What if Ayers had killed only policy makers and generals? Would that make it more commendable, or imply that those who provided support for his views should feel no remorse about the actions of vigilantes like him?

I'm not sure what you mean by "the same basic strategy." Obviously setting off bombs is _not_ the "same basic strategy" as shooting an individual person. The latter obviously draws attention to a specific individual. If it is motivated by the fact that, in fact, that specific individual was a murderer (and the individual really _was_ a murderer), then I would call it vigilantism, and to be condemned as vigilantism but not as terrorism. The latter term, as I would always use it and as I believe most people understand it, connotes an intent _not_ to restrict one's targets to actual, specific, nameable murderers. And by the way, policy makers and generals are not, per se, murderers, even if you disagree with their policies.

Your approach here seems to me throughout to be a bit odd, Step2, considering that you have told me again and again over, oh, the past four or five years (is it now?) in comments that you believe a child should be protected from being killed if it is capable of taking *even a single breath* outside of the womb. As far as I can see, you shouldn't be trying to wring all our hearts with tales of the terrible life Tiller's victims would have lived or with sympathy for him because he offered (for God's sake!) "grief counseling," or trying to liken him to a policy maker or a general. You should rather be right on board with calling him a murderer and condemning his murderer, in turn, as a murderer of a murderer--in other words, a vigilante.

To say that Dr. Tiller was more evil than Jeffrey Dahmer is in itself monstrous. Tiller was not even a murderer. In fact,what he did as an aboerionist was highly ethical and humane.
Did Tiller force any women to have abortions? Of course not.
Furthermore, the late-term abortions he did were for women with severe
health crises late in pregnancy. Most likely he saved the lives of many women, or prevented them from being seriously and permanently harmed.
Tiller was no more evil than a veterinarian who euthanmizes terminally ill animals. Yes, you Catholics will be appalled by what I am saying. But this is the truth.

1* When the laws fails to accomplish a very important good, a citizen has in rare cases a right to bring about that good. The hindrance of millionfold mass murder is such a case.

But another criteria before you can bring about that good is the likelihood of success, and the creation of additional harms. As Lydia
pointed out, not much likelihood of success, and in the end probably causing more harm and disorder. You will not be preventing millionsof murders - in fact, you will be adding one at least, and likely not preventing the other.

As for Robert Berger(meister meisterberger? - couldn't resist) - 60,000 plus late term abortions - and all were b/c of health reasons (not that it makes it any less murder, but just for sake of argument) - you have to be kidding me.

I also saw the parallels between Dahmer's murder and Tiller's murder. Both men were evil. Both men killed repeatedly. Both men had used to legal system to escape as much as possible culpability for their actions.

And both of their killers did wrong in taking the law into their own hands.

But people who can only see the evil in what Dahmer did, and not in what Tiller did, might still be able to understand how one can find a man's actions utterly reprehensible, and still not want to see him murdered.

Mike T, I'd say the analogy (if we are to talk about suicide bombers) is to someone who is intending to engage in a suicide bombing tomorrow, is not wearing a vest now, and is attending his mosque at the moment. And in that case, shooting him dead is unequivocally and beyond all question vigilantism, taking the law into your own hands, and not justified on "defense" grounds.

So, would it be unjust for the US military to burst into a private meeting in the mosque and shoot dead all of the planners and the would-be terrorist? I say that because a lawful authority is still a vigilante when it breaks its own laws. In fact, vigilante behavior is increasingly a problem among American law enforcement who act like, when it comes to them, the laws are more along the lines of guidelines and helpful suggestions than actual rules they have to live by.

I happen to regard that sort of situation as being governed somewhat by situational morality. If the person who finds the suicide bomber and their planners cannot inform the lawful authorities before it happens, or knows beyond a reasonable doubt that the lawful authorities are in on it, I think homicide would be morally licit.

On a related note about the government, authority and vigilantism, have you ever heard of Operation Northwoods? It's a confirmed plot by the US military to conduct acts of terrorism against American citizens. The DoD has actually admitted to it. Things like that certainly have the potential turn the "lawful authority" in Romans 13 on its head and make vigilante a meaningless charge in certain contexts.

***WRT the second paragraph, if a Palestinian murdered members of Hamas who were about to attack Israelis, I would call that morally licit since the governing authority is not doing anything to prevent such attacks, and is even helping Hamas behave criminally. The good citizen has no recourse to lawful authority to stop the attacks other than his or her own violence.

Despite the derision Ari received in this thread--which I am sure he in part intentionally provoked and is perfectly capable of shouldering--he saw the heart of this issue before anyone.

While I myself consider abortion of any kind just as hideously horrific & atrociously criminal as the holocaust itself; concerning those who desire simply to operate within the acceptable bounds & seemingly "just" parameters of the Law...[can we] crucify them for offenses they might not be immediately aware as genuinely being crimes themselves (more precisely, that abortion itself is actually murder -- and, indeed, of the worst kind -- contrary to the enlightened opinions of this world's cognoscente & Man's Law itself), that they may be, quite simply, oblivious too?

nothing more has been added to this in any of the comments about vigilante what if's.

We have legitimized abortion under rule of law, and this in a free society. The latter makes comparisons to the Nazis improper; and the former, apart from being our own judgment upon us, makes execution of an abortionist murder.

And Robert Berger, you are one of those rational types. No bias allowed, objectivity only *wink* am I right? You really can't come on here and expect us religious to understand; least of all those Catholics. Don't get me started on them...I don't want to thread-jack, but I heard Aquinas actually believed in the Real Presence.

Did Tiller force any women to have abortions? Of course not.

And who said atheists didn't have faith?

Furthermore, the late-term abortions he did were for women with severe
health crises late in pregnancy. Most likely he saved the lives of many women, or prevented them from being seriously and permanently harmed.

I'm surprised more people weren't in his line of work given the heroic medical wonders you praise him for. Of course, you applaud his saving the life of women as though it were of incredible importance, when only two lines before you dismiss, without any explanation whatsoever, the worthiness of saving perfectly viable children. What gives Robert?

Oh, and lest I leave out this gem

Tiller was no more evil than a veterinarian who euthanmizes terminally ill animals.

Now how exactly does that one apply? Is it the children that are like the terminally ill dogs and the horses with broken legs? Or is not physical illness but the unloved atmosphere that the children risk being born into that they are being delivered of?

Yes, you Catholics will be appalled by what I am saying. But this is the truth.

Given your complete lack of any explanation, I'm really surprised you didn't capitalize the "t" in truth. Then I might have understood you. It is revelation that you are handing us. Yes, then I would see. But to capitalize Catholic but not truth--now really, I am without compass here.

Qualifying something by saying it is "the truth" tends to instill more doubt than assurance. In the absence of an accompanying miracle or crucifixion you really should refrain from ending posts that way.

While I myself consider abortion of any kind just as hideously horrific & atrociously criminal as the holocaust itself; concerning those who desire simply to operate within the acceptable bounds & seemingly "just" parameters of the Law, innocently submitting themselves to the precepts of Man as their Rule for Justice (since they themselves might not know any better); regarding such folks, must we really consign even these to outright condemnation (drawing a parallel between folks -- who might more likely be naive individuals than the awful villains we believe them to be -- and the ever inimical Hitler/Dahmer, etc.) and, ultimately, crucify them for offenses they might not be immediately aware as genuinely being crimes themselves (more precisely, that abortion itself is actually murder -- and, indeed, of the worst kind -- contrary to the enlightened opinions of this world's cognoscente & Man's Law itself), that they may be, quite simply, oblivious to?

You ought to (re)read Romans 1, then. Paul makes it very clear that their ignorance of the truth and subsequent obedience to worldly evil is due to a corrupted nature, not innocent ignorance.

As far as I can see, you shouldn't be trying to wring all our hearts with tales of the terrible life Tiller's victims would have lived or with sympathy for him because he offered (for God's sake!) "grief counseling," or trying to liken him to a policy maker or a general.

It is strange that you’ve never seen me complain before about demonizing opponents. Tell me which motive of Dr. Tiller’s was equivalent to Dahmer, Stalin, or Hitler. Did he enjoy brutal sadism, did he seek totalitarian authority, did he have a toxic degree of racism? Furthermore, let’s imagine that he was like those monsters; did Hitler ever receive grateful letters from the families of the Holocaust victims?

You should rather be right on board with calling him a murderer and condemning his murderer, in turn, as a murderer of a murderer--in other words, a vigilante.

If all late-term abortion providers were shut down tomorrow, you are still confronted with a number of heartbreaking situations with impossible odds against them. That is the price of holding onto the principle of protecting innocent persons, which is easy to make when you aren't the one paying. I believe the principle is worth the price, but it is not a simple or uniform thing. According to the State Department, the term terrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against civilian and unarmed military targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

did Hitler ever receive grateful letters from the families of the Holocaust victims?

So whether X is a heinous murderer or not depends in any degree at all on whether the family of X's victims thank him for bumping off the victims? Gee, what that means for getting rid of old Aunt Millie, whom I absolutely cannot stand...

As a matter of fact, Step2, I believe we do have a letter from a father lauding Hitler's euthanasia regime (I forget if it is written _to_ Hitler, so perhaps "thanking" is not exactly the right word) for killing his disabled child and thus preserving the strength and purity of the race.

It also does have something important to do with Aristocles' point: ignorance is no excuse for violating the law. Well, it may be a valid excuse under modern secular law which has something like 8,000 criminal offenses just at the federal level, but you get my drift ;) It's specious to claim that you didn't know that partial birth abortion was murder. It's also fairly difficult to say that it never occurred to you that abortion might even be morally problematic. The idea of not punishing people because they are so far out there that they didn't grok the morality of their actions is a pretty modern idea.

Aristocles and I have fought over this issue on issues ranging from abortion to teen sex (in both cases, I assert that the party claiming moral ignorance or incapacity is full of $hi7).

Well, Mike, I haven't been around here for very long and can't comment on you and Ari's deep rifts (who am I to decide where the doctors disagree?) But I think the relevant point here isn't that Tiller is innocent, let alone before God, but that death is a final judgment. As a final judgment it implies a full knowledge of the case, including the state of the individual--to the full extent that this is humanly possible. Even in cases where the sentence may justly be death, we have rightly appointed that it be (tacitly) passed by us all, not any individual.

When we have encouraged an act in a free society, we can hardly be justified in passing final judgment on an individual for carrying out that act. Yes, even if that act is murder. Those words stare back at me as I write them and I shudder; but this is the best I can reason out the ethical dilemma right now.

Also, the above paragraphs refer to pre-meditated killing, as was the case with Tiller and is also the case with capital punishment.

When we have encouraged an act in a free society, we can hardly be justified in passing final judgment on an individual for carrying out that act. Yes, even if that act is murder. Those words stare back at me as I write them and I shudder; but this is the best I can reason out the ethical dilemma right now.

As I said, the simplest, most humane solution is amnesty, followed by execution from that point on for abortionists. It keeps the pro-choicers from fearing that we're going to lynch them all, and yet establishes justice.

As an aside, The Deuce said something that resonated with me about abortion and morality. Our own ancestors would most likely have viewed our treatment of partial birth abortion in a manner similar to a court decision to allow Dahmer to run around murdering people with impunity. The wringing of hands over the vigilantism and rule of law issue here may, in part, be our reaction to living in an even more depraved age than the ones prior in America. In short, I think there may be something to his argument that our living in such a depraved age might serve to cloud our judgments regarding the rule of law and even morality such that if we were born 500 years ago or even 100 years ago, most commenters here might be significantly less concerned about the "rule of law" and more concerned with the moral insanity foisted by the "lawful authority."

Brett is opposed to capital punishment, though, Mike T. So he and you are not going to even begin to see eye to eye on any of this. He apparently would not even countenance having Tiller executed _lawfully_ after breaking a definite law, with a definite death penalty.

As I said, the simplest, most humane solution is amnesty, followed by execution from that point on for abortionists. It keeps the pro-choicers from fearing that we're going to lynch them all, and yet establishes justice.

On that I entirely agree. My comments were still referring to vigilante actions.

As an aside, The Deuce said something that resonated with me about abortion and morality. Our own ancestors would most likely have viewed our treatment of partial birth abortion in a manner similar to a court decision to allow Dahmer to run around murdering people with impunity. The wringing of hands over the vigilantism and rule of law issue here may, in part, be our reaction to living in an even more depraved age than the ones prior in America. In short, I think there may be something to his argument that our living in such a depraved age might serve to cloud our judgments regarding the rule of law and even morality such that if we were born 500 years ago or even 100 years ago, most commenters here might be significantly less concerned about the "rule of law" and more concerned with the moral insanity foisted by the "lawful authority."

And hence my shudder.

Brett is opposed to capital punishment, though, Mike T. So he and you are not going to even begin to see eye to eye on any of this. He apparently would not even countenance having Tiller executed _lawfully_ after breaking a definite law, with a definite death penalty.

And Lydia, as much as I delight in your posts I can't make heads or tails of this one. What is this all about? I have a bit of that whiplash you complained to Paul about in the other thread.

By the way Mike, I found the R.R. Reno article over at First Things helpful. If the discussion here took place in terms of the 3 criteria he talks about there, I think things would be a little clearer.

Paul makes it very clear that their ignorance of the truth and subsequent obedience to worldly evil is due to a corrupted nature, not innocent ignorance.

As I said, the simplest, most humane solution is amnesty, followed by execution from that point on for abortionists. It keeps the pro-choicers from fearing that we're going to lynch them all, and yet establishes justice.

Mike T.,
Wasn't it you who said elsewhere that Islam is an ideology out for world domination? Perhaps you were projecting, for what is your "faith", but an especially harsh political creed with a biblical fillip?

You sound like the abandoned love child born of a union between Ayn Rand and the Right Reverend Billy Sol Hargis. Your fire and brimstone libertarianism promises executions for women who abort their children, has gloated over the dead Palestinian women and children of Gaza, and you never tire of telling us that the "rule of law" (with your mocking quotes) is no match for the moral authority invested in you by the God of the Old Testament and Atlas Shrugged.Vengeance is mine sayeth the righteous one who really, really liked the holocaust at the end of Rand's gospel, more so than even the violent passages in Scripture.

Roeder committed a politically motivated act of murder spurned on by profound mental instability and his "officers" with The Army of God He is not a vigilante. He saved no lives. Another moral cretin, and there are no shortage of them, will take over the Tiller franchise. This time with federal marshals acting as his escorts.

Tiller's murder inside a house of worship served the same diabolical force that makes careers like his possible, obscures Christ behind a tawdry curtain of raw political passions, co-opts the Word and re-forms the human condition into a merciless ideological program.

Your lectures on moral confusion are powerful you can't possibly appreciate. Perhaps,the profiteer Morris Dees can include some of your bits in his next fund-raising appeal warning his credulous subscribers of the Sunday school Mujahadeen mobilizing under your command.

In an ironic twist, Mr. Roeder, like Dr. Tiller, is a product of his age, one that taught him there are actually political solutions to the human condition, and that they can be wrought by means rationalized by utilitarian premises.

Mr. Roeder entered the sanctuary of a church, which should be a place of safety and refuge, to kill unjustly for an end he thought emancipated him from the constraints of the moral law. Dr. Tiller entered the sanctuary of the womb, which should be a place of safety and refuge, to kill unjustly for an end he thought emancipated him from the constraints of the moral law.

You sound like the abandoned love child born of a union between Ayn Rand and the Right Reverend Billy Sol Hargis. Your fire and brimstone libertarianism promises executions for women who abort their children, has gloated over the dead Palestinian women and children of Gaza, and you never tire of telling us that the "rule of law" (with your mocking quotes) is no match for the moral authority invested in you by the God of the Old Testament and Atlas Shrugged.
Vengeance is mine sayeth the righteous one who really, really liked the holocaust at the end of Rand's gospel, more so than even the violent passages in Scripture.

I'm not a fan of Rand or her philosophy because I regard her level of autonomy as being sociopathic.

I also use scare quotes around "the rule of law" because it is mostly an academic construct. Governments do what they want, when they want and only hold themselves accountable if they feel like or are afraid of a mass response from the public.

And of course, once again, you delve into the same level of idiocy as Aristocles regarding the Palestinians, so nothing I can say to you can inform you of my actual position or why you are just flat out wrong.

Tiller's murder inside a house of worship served the same diabolical force that makes careers like his possible, obscures Christ behind a tawdry curtain of raw political passions, co-opts the Word and re-forms the human condition into a merciless ideological program.

You don't have to be an extremist to regard his "house of worship" as being closer to a temple of Moloch, than a church. It's debatable when a church allows an abortionist to serve in their services. It's flat out indefensible when they allow one of the 3 partial birth abortion providers to do so. Yet... they'd take a great exception to another church allowing a hitman or a mosque allowing mujahadeen to serve, despite there being no difference between those three classes of men.

Your lectures on moral confusion are powerful you can't possibly appreciate. Perhaps,the profiteer Morris Dees can include some of your bits in his next fund-raising appeal warning his credulous subscribers of the Sunday school Mujahadeen mobilizing under your command.

You really have a way of coming off as the hysterical nutjob who has Homeland Security on speed dial looking for dem dernn terrists...

Deuce said:Actually, it occurs to me that killing Tiller wasn't necessarily the *only* way to stop his murder spree. Another way would have been to knock him unconscious, and then cut off his hands and feet (and perhaps tongue, to prevent the inevitable speaking tour), thus rendering him incapable of plying his evil trade. Had Tiller's killer done that instead, I wouldn't even consider this case to be near-borderline. In that case, I'd offer to buy him a beer if I ever got the chance. Of course, that would also be harder to pull off.

Could I take one of his kidney's out and eat it with some some Flava beans and a nice Chianti? He can survive with one after all.

It should cause us all to shudder. There are some here who are foolish enough to think that they have been raised in an unbroken tradition, and are not tainted by modern culture. My hunch may be wrong, but it is entirely possible that Christians of prior generations would have found abortion, especially partial birth abortion, to be one of those things which outright delegitimizes a government's claim to being a lawful authority. There is a well-documented difference between the Catholic Church that was willing to wage war to push Islam back during the first crusade, and the Catholic Church today which is mealy mouthed in dealing with Islam, so it's certainly possible.

Wasn't it you who said elsewhere that Islam is an ideology out for world domination? Perhaps you were projecting, for what is your "faith", but an especially harsh political creed with a biblical fillip?

It takes a hysterical mind to go from me quoting Romans 1 to saying that I hold an Islamist-like totalitarian world view. You really are descending to the point of just being wildly emotional in your responses.

I think from a theological perspective, Romans 1 is an entirely sound explanation of the moral issue behind their ignorance. If I were a totalitarian, especially one of the Islamist type only Christian, I would not even countenance amnesty as an option. In fact, I consider it absolutely necessary as a humane solution to bringing an end to abortion, and the only lawful solution in keeping with both God's law and the established law of the land regarding ex-post facto laws.

Based on your response, I think it's reasonable to conclude that either you disagree with my assertion that Romans 1 explains the theology of their ignorance or that you believe that abortion does not warrant classification as a capital crime. If the latter, then that means you clearly do not regard abortion as murder. So, which is it?

I'm sorry Brett. I merely meant that if (as I think you were saying) you are opposed to capital punishment, then a fortiori you and Mike T are not going to have any common ground from which to discuss what is vigilantism, when one is or isn't (or whether one is ever) justified in taking the law into one's own hands, etc. But later you seemed to agree with his prescription for lawful execution, so it may be that I misunderstood you when I took you to be opposing capital punishment.

Kevin, I don't understand why you say that Roeder wasn't a vigilante. Your next sentence says that he "saved no lives." But I have always taken it that when people get together an informal posse and go and hunt down a killer, against the law and taking the law into their own hands, because they don't think the law is working right or moving fast enough or whatever, that is a paradigm case of vigilantism. Roeder's murderous action seems to fall right into that category. That he didn't save any lives is one part of what makes his act wrong and vigilantism rather than "defense of the innocent."

One thing I thought I'd point out: A lot of people have brought up the fact that Tiller was shot inside his church in a way suggesting that his being killed in a "holy place" makes things worse. I really have to disagree. That church is not a holy place at all, but a place of blasphemy and rot, a "synagogue of Satan". Instead of telling him to turn from his sins and repent, they told him that it was all A-OK, and allowed him to serve as an usher and his wife to sing in the choir. To whatever extent this whole thing can be called appropriate, it is most appropriate (or, rather, least inappropriate) that Tiller should have been killed in a place of death.

You don't have to be an extremist to regard his "house of worship" as being closer to a temple of Moloch, than a church...

There is no Tradition or spiritual authority you can cite that supports violence agaisnt those who attend a temple of Moloch, or the shrine to Mars with an inviting cross on the archway.

I also use scare quotes around "the rule of law" because it is mostly an academic construct...

The symbiotic relationship between anarchy and tyranny begins with the rebellion of private judgment and comes to fruition in personal despotism and social tyranny. You become both Ceasar and God in your narrative.

It takes a hysterical mind to go from me quoting Romans 1 to saying that I hold an Islamist-like totalitarian world view.

I object to your coy attempt to frame your sympathy for the devil with Scriptural latticework. Your political religion is similar to that of the Islamist, in that you selectively quote from sacred texts to displace established, albeit very flawed social orders, with your own rough versions. Christianity without the Person of Christ is a doomed, Gnostic experiment. Sincere believers will suffer martyrdom under Liberalism’s inhuman yoke, rather than elevate a heresy to worldly power.

There is no Tradition or spiritual authority you can cite that supports violence agaisnt those who attend a temple of Moloch, or the shrine to Mars with an inviting cross on the archway.

You are approaching the point of being an abject moron in how you read what I wrote, Kevin, since I have never made an actual defense of Roeder's killing as morally justified. My schadenfreude at his death is not the same thing as a moral defense of the act itself.

The symbiotic relationship between anarchy and tyranny begins with the rebellion of private judgment and comes to fruition in personal despotism and social tyranny. You become both Ceasar and God in your narrative.

It is true that a mass preference for private judgment would have that effect, but invariably throughout history arbitrary decisions by government and "do as we say, not as we do because we're the king's men and we're above the law" attitudes that go unpunished are what drives tyranny. The 20th century alone shows that it is government itself which is the greatest assailant of the rule of law. What good is this precious "rule of law" when it means that Stalin can order the liquidation of 25% of the Ukranian nation and over 20M soviets in general, or that Hitler can order classes of citizens to be rounded up for liquidation? Hence Thomas Jefferson's admonition that we be mindful of the law we are following, as the law itself is can be nothing more than the evil will of a tyrant.

I object to your coy attempt to frame your sympathy for the devil with Scriptural latticework. Your political religion is similar to that of the Islamist, in that you selectively quote from sacred texts to displace established, albeit very flawed social orders, with your own rough versions. Christianity without the Person of Christ is a doomed, Gnostic experiment. Sincere believers will suffer martyrdom under Liberalism’s inhuman yoke, rather than elevate a heresy to worldly power.

Once again, you have to refer to strawmen in order to make yourself look good. You and Aristocles are two rhetorical peas in a pod. You take my raising serious legitimacy issues with our own system and take them out in left field. By any object standard, the United States has authorized nearly 2/3 as much democide in the last 30 years as the Soviet Union actually committed in all ~80 years of existence. I DO raise a serious legitimacy question regarding the moral legitimacy of our legal system if it continues to authorize a level of carnage on par with the worst, mass murderous states in human history. If you believe that abortion is murder, and I do, then Roe v. Wade is tantamount to the SCOTUS giving private citizens authorization to carry out a campaign of homicide on par with Stalin's purges and the Final Solution.

Yet, in your mind, that elevates me to the level of a totalitarian or violent anarchist. Incredible.

The PRC: 76.7M
The USSR: 61.9M
The US under Roe. v Wade: ~35-40M
Nazi Germany: 20M

I do not advocate revolution, and I do not advocate violence here either, but I think it is about time that pro-lifers wake the hell up and look at the numbers and absorb what they actually mean. In another 36 years, if left unchanged, the US government will have authorized, through private means, the liquidation of enough innocent lives to equal or exceed those murdered by the USSR throughout its existence, and we'll be playing catch up with the PRC.

Roeder does not rise to the level of vigilante. Instead, his story is of a man beset by personal demons, mental impairment and social alienation falling into manipulative hands and ultimately the very culture of death he tried to both escape and thwart. No Clint Eastwood script here. Just more brokenness and grief.

2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Aristocles and I have fought over this issue on issues ranging from abortion to teen sex (in both cases, I assert that the party claiming moral ignorance or incapacity is full of $hi7).

Oh, that's right --

Scripture has it that Mike T is amongst those capable of judging Men's Hearts!

Forgive me, but I thought only God was capable of doing thus and not mere man.

Perhaps the Buddhist doctor who spends a remarkable amount of time and money towards such charities like Children's Hospital but, for one reason or another, is not immediately aware that abortion itself involves the very murder of such children because she happens to be of certain scientific mind (wholly absent of certain Christian principles) incapable of appreciating this fact but is only capable of acknowledging the tenets of Science itself; such person is perhaps just as atrociously heinous as Hitler and Dahmer!

Would you prefer that I provide you with her address so that you and your virtuous "PRO-LIFE" Christians can go and demonstrate what the Culture of Life is all about by taking hers?

Maybe further heroic oratory can be expounded on the merits of such heroes as yourselves who are paving the way to a "PRO-LIFE" society by heralding the very acts upon which the Culture of Death itself is actually based.

Also, maybe you can teach her younger tween daughter on how she can engage quite rightly in sexual relations with profoundly older men, as you yourself seem wont to demonstrate in other threads?

Would you prefer that I provide you with her address so that you and your virtuous "PRO-LIFE" Christians can go and demonstrate what the Culture of Life is all about by taking hers?

Also, maybe you can teach her younger tween daughter on how she can engage quite rightly in sexual relations with profoundly older men, as you yourself seem wont to demonstrate in other threads?

Lydia, Frank, etc. I hereby nominate Aristocles for the mantle of Official WWwtW Troll should you ever decide to fill that position. In fact, with people like him here, you ought to thank Congress for having unusual foresight and principles when drafting Section 230 of the CDA. If you know what that statute is, then you know what I am accusing Aristocles of.

Not that I would personally take any sort of action, just that sometimes I look at people like Aristocles' comments and realize how fortunate we are to live in a society with the first amendment and Section 230.

Aristocles _is_ tiresome. I've gotten to the point where I try not even to respond to him. But for the record, if said Buddhist doctor actually dismembers unborn children herself, then, yes, she is a heinous murderer. And science is on the pro-life side here, as we have discussed in other threads. Doctors and others cannot get out of this by citing "science" and by pretending that we need special, mystical, "religious" knowledge to know the truth about abortion. It is as much a scientific statement that the unborn child is a young human being as it is that an unborn puppy is a young canine. I recommend the movies "Silent Scream" and "Eclipse of Reason" to said Buddhist doctor if she really has been able to keep herself comfortably unaware of what abortion truly is while engaging in her charitable work with born children whom no one has decided to dismember or otherwise murder. If that's the case, then her attitude of mind is profoundly obscurantist and _unscientific_, whatever she may think.

But that's all I'll say in response to him. Meanwhile, Mike, I prithee, don't bring up the "age of consent" thing anymore. As you know, I disagree with you on that, but beyond that, it just exacerbates matters.

With regard to Aristocles post above, that is another example for people like Joseph A of how Aristocles takes a position and twists it. He has, for example done the following:

1) Taken my position that teenagers are morally responsible for their sexual choices and twisted it into me saying that it's morally OK to have sex with teenagers.

2) Taken my position that Roe v. Wade was a mass murder causing ruling on par with the great democides of the Communist and Fascist states, and turned it into a justification to murder doctors.

Christian charity would demand that I regard Aristocles as an imbecile who simply doesn't know better rather than someone who thinks it's funny to maliciously twist others' words into blatantly libelous statements.

That is not the kind of genuine Christianity my Lord & Saviour and all of a once united Christendom dedicated their very lives to.

Obviously, this generation's version would seem more than willing to accomodate an entirely different variety, more perverse than even heresy itself.

On all issues--all issues--I divide morality into that which the state must regulate for the sake of public safety and civil order, and that which can be left up to God. I accept all orthodox Christian moral limits. Where you and I differ, irreconcilably, in our philosophy is that I am only willing to enforce morality on others when it is necessary for public safety and civil order. I am quite content to allow sinners to be sinners until they do demonstrable harm to the life, liberty and property of their neighbor. That is the only extent that I am willing to enforce morality on others through the state. I also have a higher, more cynical threshold for what actually constitutes demonstrable harm than most others.

MikeT, your comparison of the U.S. to Russia fails to take into account Abortion in Russia:

"In 1920, Russia became the first country in the world to allow abortion in all circumstances...

"Abortion statistics were classified in the Soviet union until the end of the 1980s. During this period, the USSR had one of the highest abortion rates in the world. The abortion rate in the USSR peaked in 1964, when 5.6 million abortions were performed..."

And today?

"...abortion can be performed on request up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, for social reason up to 22 weeks, and for medical necessity and upon the woman's consent at any point during pregnancy...

"...the countries of the former Soviet Union maintain the highest rate of abortions in the world. In 2001, 1,320,000 children were born in Russia, while 1,800,000 abortions were performed..."

etc.

(Though, interestingly, abortion in the USSR was banned under Stalin.)

Lydia, as before in order to skew the record (whether inadvertently, deliberately or with a view to keeping to topic), may very well remove these comments; but in an effort to correct the record, let me just say that you have a penchant yourself for twisting things.

You dared make the claim in a previous thread that a 12 year old -- who I personally deemed potentially naive in such matters (especially at that tender & incredibly impressionable age) and would thus be like innocent prey to adult men of such deplorable morality -- was deserving of being ravaged by such men to the point of even rape instead of deserving lawful protection.

However, since that is beyond the scope of this thread, that's all I'll say about that here. I only did so because of your previous comments that sought to twist the record to your own agenda.

As to the immediate matter at hand, I'll not comment on that any further since, obviously, your version of Christianity is remarkably different than mine own which hold even the murder of such men at the hands of the mob just as strikingly similar to that very disdain for life that abortion itself holds.

Lydia:

It's not at all a matter of holding things in the same manner you regard as "scientific" (for, on the contrary, even your purportedly "scientific" view would, to other folks such as those in the World of Science, might very well be regarded as blatantly "Un-Scientific") or that it is bloody obvious to these folks that abortion is actually itself murder (although, personally, it should be but, unfortunately, for one reason or another, it doesn't appear to be that way for, at least, some).

That may be due to perhaps a handicap on their part, but not necessarily an attribute deserving comparison with either Hitler or Dahmer; or, worse, deserving of being murdered, for heaven's sakes.

I mean, the fact that she devotes incredible monetary patronage to such things as orphanages and Children's Hospital research for kids would itself provide some kind of compelling evidence of some sort that there is perhaps a disconnect which may be more the result of some failure in philosophic (and obviously religious) thought rather than some heinous Hitler-ian villainy.

Then again, I myself would leave the judging of men's hearts entirely to God as well as the little matter concerning vengeance.

I find it interesting that several commentators seem to regard Ed's parallel between Dahmer and Tiller as in-apt because allegedly Tiller had "good intentions." This is really incredible. We are talking about child murder, and no one knew that better than Tiller, given that he was injecting killing drugs directly into the children's hearts, directed by ultrasound. That appears to have been his preferred method. Regardless of whether we're talking about heart injection, PBA, or dismemberment, we are talking about _late-term abortion_ here, folks, about babies that Tiller could see with his own eyes, babies who, had they been wanted and born in the hospital, would have been cherished and cared for by the medical profession. Infants. Undeniable infants.

So, if you murder infants for an ostensibly high-minded motive, this makes you something other than a monster? It's just incredible that people seem to think this way. It's as if Dahmer donated his victims' bodies to science or to feed the hungry and we said he wasn't a monster because he didn't have a "bad motive." Other than murdering people, of course.

Stalin was motivated by ideology. To this day there are Europeans who try to excuse the mass murders by the communists as being "less bad" than Hitler's slaughters on those very grounds. You know--the communists _meant well_.

People who have their moral compass pointing even roughly in the right direction should reject this sort of sophistry absolutely and out of hand, as much for Tiller as for anyone else. I repeat: Ed is totally right. Tiller was a monster.

Even if abortion were illegal and Dr. Tiller were performing late-term abortions on the side, his assassination would still be unjust. Nobody has the right to take the law into his own hands, even if the law is on the side of right.

This does not sound to me like "apathy." In fact, it sounds to me an awful lot like "ding dong the witch-doctor's dead!"

I was apathetic to the moral angles of it, and happy to see him stopped. I was not happy specifically to see his life taken. However, like a "poor man's Mao or Stalin," I'll pray for his soul once or twice (already have, actually) and then move on without an ounce of sympathy beyond that.

Perhaps you'd like to take this opportunity to withdraw that remark? Perhaps your emotions temporarily got the better of your mature judgment?

I would certain not phrase it like that, so as to imply to some that I was jumping up and down at the news of his death. I won't lie to you and say that I didn't feel a certain schadenfreude. However, I take no pleasure in the man's death.

Here's what I would say, Frank. If the law were on the side of right here, and if it were truly being enforced, you could do something like this: You report, "This guy Tiller is going to be performing an abortion today in such-and-such a place. Hurry." An ordinary 9/11 call, just as you would if a child were threatened under any other circumstances. Then you could indeed go to the place, chain yourself to the door to block the door, maybe cut the cord of the machine or otherwise knock down the equipment, tackle Tiller--all sorts of things that now are totally illegal but would then be in the nature of a citizen's helping to stop a robbery in progress are now--just to delay things until the cops got there to stop the proceedings. And the cops would come, and you would be vindicated, and Tiller would be arrested. The "operation rescue" stuff that doesn't involve killing anyone but that does provide delay and is worse than useless now would have a point in a wholly different legal context. Myself, I doubt Tiller would have tried any such thing if he really thought there were a chance of his being arrested. But I could be wrong.

Strange but true story: Dr. Tiller was working as a Navy surgeon when his father, mother, sister, and brother-in-law were killed in a plane crash. He took over his father's family practice, and soon women started asking him if he was going to do what his father did. That's how he found out his father had provided abortions in the years before Roe v. Wade.

So, if you (perform severely immoral act)for an ostensibly high-minded motive, this makes you something other than a monster? It's just incredible that people seem to think this way.

How many discussions have you been involved in where this is the major dividing line? Personally, I've lost count. That is THE question in ethics that determines absolute versus relative values for various moral goods and outcomes. The fact is that motives usually do count in people's judgment of behavior.

Even if abortion were illegal and Dr. Tiller were performing late-term abortions on the side, his assassination would still be unjust. Nobody has the right to take the law into his own hands, even if the law is on the side of right.

Hi, Frank, I think that abortion being illegal would make it worse, not better, to "take the law into your own hands". For in that case, you would have an established legal system in which to pursue justice lawfully, and which you would be subverting by recourse to your own personal "justice". Taking justice into your own hands can only be justified in a scenario in which there is no legitimate system of legal authority in which justice may be sought.

I thought it was without question that anyone that understood the pro-life position, which is that the life of an individual human being begins at conception, would find it obvious that abortion is murder. Put frankly, an abortion is the deliberate choice to kill an innocent human being, which is by definition a murder.

The murder of Tiller is indefensible, but the manner in which I have heard some talk radio host handle this issue is something I find troubling. They are bending over backwards to point out that not only do the actions of Scott Roeder not represent the pro-life movement, but neither do his extreme beliefs regarding abortion and by extreme beliefs they mean the belief that abortion is murder. In fact, at least one "pro-life" radio host has said that to consider abortion murder is to discredit the pro-life movement. What is going on here?

Even if abortion were illegal and Dr. Tiller were performing late-term abortions on the side, his assassination would still be unjust. Nobody has the right to take the law into his own hands, even if the law is on the side of right.

Even most militant pro-lifers would never think about taking the law into their own hands under that scenario. It's precisely because the law is so out of touch with basic right and wrong that people consider following the law to be optional. I don't agree with them, but I don't blame them either.

The rule of law is already almost a farce in the US. The police routinely get away with breaking the law, and prosecutors do as well now in many cases based on their courtroom conduct. As things get progressively worse, vigilantism will get worse because people won't get justice through the law, and the government will bear a significant portion of the responsibility for that before God.

I also forgot to mention how judges often just make up their rulings out of thin air. Like this one where the appeals court ruled that the 2nd amendment is not incorporated because of federalism, which is an older principle than the right to carry a weapon of your choosing, but it actually isn't since common law is a tradition that is older than federalism and grants the right to carry arms to all free adults. I would say that you can't make this stuff up about the government, but the government has no problem making it up!

Do the poster and commenters think that a relevant disanalogy arises from the fact that Tiller performed late-term abortions only when either the fetus was discovered to have a severe defect or when the woman's health was threatened? If not, why not? It certainly seems to me that even if I thought Tiller and others had reached the wrong conclusion that I could recognize the moral question as sufficiently difficult that a comparison with Jeffrey Dahmer was beyond the pale. Indeed, what is the purpose of making such a comparison? Surely it is not meant to rationally persuade others to your conclusion. You can't possibly have sat down to write this post thinking that you would change anyone's mind by this argument.

Furthermore, your injunction against vigilantism rings a bit hollow. Do you really mean for this to be an absolutely inviolable principle? Suppose a racist government refuses to protect a minority from persecution. Don't members of the minority have a right to protect themselves? Or, suppose a government refuses to outlaw rape. Would it not be justifiable to protect women by means outside the law? Do you really believe that there are absolutely no circumstances in which vigilante action is justified? I suspect insincerity. You offer a tenuous premise as the only reason more doctors should not be murdered. In light of the fact that your main argument cannot possibly be construed as an attempt to persuade and in fact adds nothing but incendiary rhetoric, I'm inclined to conjecture that the injunction against vigilantism is just cover for an incitement to further violence. That is, I suspect some might read this post and think "if the government had refused to stop Dahmer, I would have"; furthermore, I suspect you know that.

"the fact that Tiller performed late-term abortions only when either the fetus was discovered to have a severe defect or when the woman's health was threatened"

a) There can't possibly have been tens of thousands of women with the two conditions you suggest in the past few years. That "fact" is a smoke screen. But even if it weren't, even if we accepted it as fact:

b) Why is a severe defect a justification for murder?

c) If a mother's health is in danger in the third trimester, it is not necessary to partially deliver her child, stick scissors into his skull, and suck out his brains in order to save her life. The child is probably viable (I have two granddaughters born early in the third trimester), and any doctor doing his job will try to save both lives. If the mother's health condition makes it impossible for her to care for the child, there are plenty of loving couples who will take him.

o the poster and commenters think that a relevant disanalogy arises from the fact that Tiller performed late-term abortions only when either the fetus was discovered to have a severe defect or when the woman's health was threatened?

If partial birth abortion were literally the only viable option to save the mother's life, you'd probably not see any disagreement in that case. However, such cases are so rare as to not be worth bringing up as a general defense of partial birth abortion. With respect to deformities, they are irrelevant. That is a matter of the mother's grief and convenience, and neither has any relevance on whether or not the unborn child is a rights-endowed being.

I'm inclined to conjecture that the injunction against vigilantism is just cover for an incitement to further violence.

You see right through us. Or, maybe we sincerly cling to the Just War Theory. Taking up arms against an unjust State is an act of war and several criteria must be met before one can do so, including the sound judgment that the evil being addressed can't be overcome by peaceful means, and a reasonable chance of success.
A Civil War over abortion is hard to justify in light of the last one fought in this country over another anti-human institution.

There is a more worrisome aspect for defenders of the statu quo than an outbreak of violence against abortionists. Those who oppress the innocent, face something far greater than the force of military arms. A fact that wherever he is now, George Tiller can confirm.

A Civil War over abortion is hard to justify in light of the last one fought in this country over another anti-human institution.

Hardly. A civil war over abortion makes far more sense than one over slavery. However, a civil war over any single social issue is likely to cause more harm than good, and thus is hard to justify based on (my understanding of) Just War Theory.

Ironically, had slavery been allowed to continue for another 15-20 years as technology and the markets rapidly changed the relationship between labor and capital, the US could have peacefully abolished slavery since most southerners and border staters would have already abandoned it.

Thanks Beth. Those are the sorts of things I would expect to come up in a sincere and intellectually honest discussion of the issues, as opposed to rhetorically fueling the fire of more violence. The top post might have addressed those issues if it were meant to persuade people to your position. On the other hand, it might have focussed on and offered more argument for anti-vigilantism if it were truly meant to persuade militant pro-life people to that position. Instead, it offered a radicalizing analogy, one bordering on incitement, combined with a milquetoast disclaimer against vigilantism.

Mr. Shipley raises an interesting question, if I understand him correctly: How ought prolifers to present their views consistent with their convictions while not inciting vigilantism? It seems to me that after 36 years of Roe v. Wade and nearly 50 million abortions, tens of thousands of protests, books, articles, websites, etc., the prolife movement has done far better than the anti-war, anti-globalists, the pro-union, environmentalist, and animal rights movements. The injustices perpetuated by prolifers pale in comparison to the property destruction, deaths, and injuries to human beings from these movements. Moreover, prolifers do an incredible amount of work with women in crisis pregnancies, providing them food, shelter, and spiritual assistance. There is simply nothing like this among prochoicers. In fact, dare I say, there are probably no naturalist epistemologists within the vicinity of these works of mercy. Prolife communities produce saints devoted to neighbor, family, and friends. When Breaking the Spell and The God Delusion result in the universities, hospitals, orphanages, and compassionate infrastructure that a prolife worldivew has produced, then you may have a point. But until then, extend the principle of charity, and make the correct judgment: a tragic anomaly from the prolife norm is not the result of prolifers proclaiming that the unborn are full members of the human community and ought not to be unjustly killed, just as the Unabomber, a nutcase professor, is a tragic anomaly from the environmentalist norm and is not the result of environmentalists proclaiming that we have an obligation to avert a global catastrophe by changing our ways of life.

It is a real shame that some abortion-choice advocates would use the unjust killing of one of their own as an opportunity to slander their fellow citizens who affirm the prolife point of view because these citizens in fact love their neighbors as themselves.

I think, for example, that the inflammatory rhetoric uttered by folks like Alan Keyes and Randall Terry at the Obama-Notre Dame protests is cartoonish and counter-productive. Those of us who are Christian prolifers have a double burden, whether we like it or not: we have to dispel exaggerated (and often false) depictions of us, unfortunately reinforced by people like Keyes and Terry; and we have to appeal to a culture that puts a premium on the absence of incendiary language in the offering of ones point of view.

Those of us who are Christian prolifers have a double burden, whether we like it or not: we have to dispel exaggerated (and often false) depictions of us, unfortunately reinforced by people like Keyes and Terry; and we have to appeal to a culture that puts a premium on the absence of incendiary language in the offering of ones point of view.

I don't know the specifics if Keyes' speech here, but if it's like his normal rhetoric, it'll be regarded as prophetic by Christian prolifers in 25 years at the rate we're going with abortion and possibly euthanasia.

Do the poster and commenters think that a relevant disanalogy arises from the fact that Tiller performed late-term abortions only when either the fetus was discovered to have a severe defect or when the woman's health was threatened?

How on earth could you possibly know this? Recall that abortionists commonly lie through their teeth when claiming that late-term abortions are done for health reasons. See, e.g.:

Pro-choice activists insist that only 500 of the 1.5 million abortions performed each year in this country involve the partial-birth method, in which a live fetus is pulled partway into the birth canal before it is aborted. They also contend that the procedure is reserved for pregnancies gone tragically awry, when the mother's life or health is endangered, or when the fetus is so defective that it won't survive after birth anyway.
* * *
But interviews with physicians who use the method reveal that in New Jersey alone, at least 1,500 partial-birth abortions are performed each year - three times the supposed national rate. Moreover, doctors say only a "minuscule amount" are for medical reasons.
* * *
Even the Abortion Federation's two prominent providers of intact D&E have showed documents that publicly contradict the federation's claims.

In a 1992 presentation at an Abortion Federation seminar, Haskell described intact D&E in detail and said he routinely used it on patients 20 to 24 weeks pregnant. Haskell went on to tell the American Medical News, the official paper of the American Medical Association, that 80 percent of those abortions were "purely elective."

The federation's other leading provider, Dr. McMahon, released a chart to the House Judiciary Committee listing "depression" as the most common maternal reason for his late-term non-elective abortions, and listing "cleft lip" several times as the fetal indication.

Interviews with physicians, as well as information gleaned from published documents and congressional testimony, paint a different picture of these late-term abortions.

It is possible — and maybe even likely — that the majority of these abortions are performed on normal fetuses, not on fetuses suffering genetic or developmental abnormalities. Furthermore, in most cases where the procedure is used, the physical health of the woman whose pregnancy is being terminated is not in jeopardy. In virtually all cases, there are alternative ways to perform the abortion safely, though perhaps not as safely as when intact D&E is used.

Instead, the “typical” patients tend to be young, low-income women, often poorly educated or naive, whose reasons for waiting so long to end their pregnancies are rarely medical.

You're forgetting that abortionists usually lie through their teeth when claiming that late-term abortions are done only for health reasons. As a New Jersey newspaper reported in 1996:

Even by the highly emotional standards of the abortion debate, the rhetoric on so-called "partial-birth" abortions has been exceptionally intense. But while indignation has been abundant, facts have not.

Pro-choice activists insist that only 500 of the 1.5 million abortions performed each year in this country involve the partial-birth method, in which a live fetus is pulled partway into the birth canal before it is aborted. They also contend that the procedure is reserved for pregnancies gone tragically awry, when the mother's life or health is endangered, or when the fetus is so defective that it won't survive after birth anyway.

The pro-choice claim has been passed on without question in several leading newspapers and by prominent commentators and politicians, including President Clinton.

But interviews with physicians who use the method reveal that in New Jersey alone, at least 1,500 partial-birth abortions are performed each year - three times the supposed national rate. Moreover, doctors say only a "minuscule amount" are for medical reasons.

* * *

Abortion rights advocates have consistently argued that intact D&Es are used under only the most compelling circumstances. In 1995, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America issued a press release asserting that the procedure "is extremely rare and done only in cases when the woman's life is in danger or in cases of extreme fetal abnormality."

In February, the National Abortion Federation issued a release saying, "This procedure is most often performed when women discover late in wanted pregnancies that they are carrying fetuses with anomalies incompatible with life."

Clinton offered the same message when he vetoed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in April, and surrounded himself with women who had wrenching testimony about why they needed abortions. One was an antiabortion marcher whose health was compromised by her 7-month-old fetus' neuromuscular disorder.

The woman, Coreen Costello, wanted desperately to give birth naturally, even knowing her child would not survive. But because the fetus was paralyzed, her doctors told her a live vaginal delivery was impossible. Costello had two options, they said: abortion or a type of Caesarean section that might ruin her chances of ever having another child. She chose an intact D&E.

But most intact D&E cases are not like Coreen Costello's. Although many third-trimester abortions are for heart-wrenching medical reasons, most intact D&E patients have their abortions in the middle of the second trimester. And unlike Coreen Costello, they have no medical reason for termination.

"We have an occasional amnio abnormality, but it's a minuscule amount," said one of the doctors at Metropolitan Medical, an assessment confirmed by another doctor there. "Most are Medicaid patients, black and white, and most are for elective, not medical, reasons: people who didn't realize, or didn't care, how far along they were. Most are teenagers."

* * *
Even the Abortion Federation's two prominent providers of intact D&E have showed documents that publicly contradict the federation's claims.

In a 1992 presentation at an Abortion Federation seminar, Haskell described intact D&E in detail and said he routinely used it on patients 20 to 24 weeks pregnant. Haskell went on to tell the American Medical News, the official paper of the American Medical Association, that 80 percent of those abortions were "purely elective."

The federation's other leading provider, Dr. McMahon, released a chart to the House Judiciary Committee listing "depression" as the most common maternal reason for his late-term non-elective abortions, and listing "cleft lip" several times as the fetal indication.

While the comments in reply to this post are abound with ignorance, the repeated insertion of the Bill Ayers strawman in to this debate puzzles me greatly. The Weather Underground only ever destroyed PROPERTY in their terror campaign, never once taking an innocent (or for that matter "guilty") human life. While being deluded and misguided in their armed struggle, the WU took great lengths to ensure that noone was ever harmed in their actions. In fact, the only lives to ever be taken by a WU bomb were the lives of WU members themselves.

If something as drastic as someone never having killed anyone can be lost on you people, what else is slipping through the cracks?

I dunno, Frank. I'm a bit of a fan of inflammatory rhetoric myself. I didn't happen to read what Keyes said. I just googled a bit and found only stories about his being arrested. What, exactly, did he say that was a problem?

Puzzled, Step2 was clearly implying that Ayers _did_ kill people (or, at a minimum, asking "what if" he did) and asking what the difference was supposed to be, if so. In fact, he even brought up a hypothetical in which Ayers killed "only policy makers and generals." If you prefer to regard the whole thing as hypothetical, feel free. Step2 (a lawyer) was trying to make some sort of argumentative point--specifically, arguing that the distinction between terrorism and vigilantism I was defending was indefensible.

The Weather Underground only ever destroyed PROPERTY in their terror campaign, never once taking an innocent (or for that matter "guilty") human life. While being deluded and misguided in their armed struggle, the WU took great lengths to ensure that noone was ever harmed in their actions.

The Weather Underground never killed anyone due to incompetence. I'll be charitable and assume that you are ignorant of their planned attack on Fort Dix which would have murdered dozens of servicemen and their dates (and first responders due to the presence of pipebombs near the site of the planned attack), or the fact that their bank robbery resulted in the death of a security guard and two police officers.

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